Charlotte Olympia proves she can do subtle shoes, too

If you think of platforms, cats, three-dimensional flowers and any other manner of crazy embellishments when you think of Charlotte Olympia, you’re on the right track. Designer Charlotte Dellal is known for her exuberant, irreverent, hyper-literal style, and her sense of humor has served her young business well – everywhere you turn, you find a fashion person wearing her shoes, and stars are catching on in droves. For the growth of an accessories business, though, it’s important to have something of a range of products; for as many crazy platforms as Christian Louboutin sells, for example, he sells a lot more black pumps.

A shoe like the Charlotte Olympia Marianne Suede Sandal proves, if nothing else, that Dellal has range within her aesthetic. What you see above is a neutral, wearable, maybe even somewhat classic strappy black sandal, but what’s not-so-hidden in those straps? The Eiffel Tower. It wouldn’t be a Charlotte Olympia shoe without a detail like that, after all, but it’s promising to see Dellal demonstrate that she can convert her vision into something muted just as well as she can turn up the volume and make something spectacular. There’s a customer for both extremes.